With 4+ years of experience in the software industry, I've gone from admitting not being able to formulate an opinion to receiving feedback from peers asking not to be too opinionated. In that journey, I discovered what it is and various other things that take its form. This little piece of writing is all about those distortions and how to distinguish them from a genuine opinion.
One year into my career, I was in a team with a lot of heated discussions & debates on the system designs & software patterns. Being new to it, I wondered, what on earth would induce such opinions to participate. I saw their contentions in a very different way. To me, they seemed like a fight, more like a war, and there is a winner in the end. Although I've known that the essence of such arguments was to get the design right, the feeling of war stuck to my subconscious, making me defensive.
When I look back at my recent past, at all those debates I've had with my peers, I notice one simple thing: I always had something to say, no matter what the design is or the expectations were from the system under design. You see, this happened because of how I interpreted my initial days of questioning how to induce opinions and relying too much on the little experience that I had gathered.
Subconciously, I went into the path of fake-it-till-you-make-it, forming my ideas based on what I am inclined towards, and I'd go to any extent to defend myself. But that is never a sincere form of it, rather an inclination to something based on instincts masquerading as opinions. These are not good stuff, they lacked reasonability, and I eventually realized it four years into my career.
So, what is an opinion anyway? It is something you base out of knowledge and not out of instincts or previous choices. One must always construct an opinion based on something they already know and not how they'd feel about something. If you are having trouble coming up with something, then probably you don't know enough. When you don't know enough, read for yourself, look at how others do things, question why they do so and learn from that. It is a slow process, and there's no way of getting around it. Being true to yourself is the only way forward!
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If you've already gone through the Kali's documentation here, you must have realised that they are a little vague and have no explaination as to why a particular command is being run. This lack of explaination inspired me to write this post.
So basically, what we need to do is install Kali on a USB stick using the dd command. Checkout out this post, or alternatively you can run the following (assuming /dev/sdb is your USB stick):
Once you are done with making your USB bootable. You can run fdisk -l to check the partitions. Most likely, you will have 2 partitions under /dev/sdb:
/dev/sdb1 # this might be around 3GB
/dev/sdb2 # around 1MB
Now, the idea is to create a new partition called /dev/sdb3, such that when summed up with /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2, adds up to 7GB.
Therefore, use fdisk to make the partitions. Alternately you can use gparted which you need to install on your linux machine (you're running currently). I like fdisk as it's available by default, simple (once you understand) and works on CLI.
Running this would start fdisk with a prompt where you can make the neccessary changes to the your USB drive.
fdisk /dev/sdb
Create a new partition using n, select primary partition, then select partition number as 3 (which is given by default) and select the default start block (just hit enter). Now for the end block, give +4G and hit enter. Verify typing p (lists the partitions). If everything looks good (you'll see sdb1, sdb2, sdb3 with different sizes, but should sum to 7GiB) just write the partition table using w (you'll exit out of fdisk prompt after this).
This partition will be used by Live Kali OS to persist changes that will be made in Kali, once you boot using the USB stick.
Enable encryption on this partition so that, if you lose your USB stick, your files stay unreadable. Remember that, if you forget the passphrase to decrypt (which will be asked every time you boot through USB stick), then you won't be able to access it either.
NOTE: Use a password manager to save the partition encryption passphrase.
Running the following will encrypt the partition and will prompt you to provide the passphrase:
Format the newly created partition and label it persistence using the following command: mkfs.ext3 -L persistence /dev/sdb3 e2label /dev/sdb3 persistence
We are not done yet, as we still have to tell Kali what to enable persistence. And to do that, you'll have to create a directory, mount the partition on the directory and create a config file as follows:
Now, un-mount the partition by running umount /dev/sdb3 command.
Close the encryption channel using:
cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/my_usb
We are done. You can boot through the USB stick (select Live USB Encrypted Persistence in the boot menu) and provide the passphrase for sdb3 when prompted (during the booting process).
The partition /dev/sdb3 will be mounted to /usr/lib/live/mount/persistence/sdb3 and used by Live Kali OS if the password is provided at boot time. If not, the persistence will not be enabled and you'll get the default Kali.
Now, you can update & upgrade your repositories using:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
NOTE: The upgrades will be persisted only if you've entered the mounted the persistence (/dev/sdb3) partition during the boot time. Your changes to the .bashrc, .profile etc should also be persisted across multiple boots, even using this USB across different machines.
One feature in particular distinguishes DigitalOcean from other cloud offerings. A little while ago, they added support for custom images, which allows us to import virtual machines disks and use them as droplets...
With SSH keys, if someone gains access to your computer, they also gain access to every system that uses that key. To add an extra layer of security, you can add a passphrase to your SSH key. You can use ssh-agent to securely save your passphrase so you don't have to reenter it.
From SSH.com
The ssh-agent is a helper program that keeps track of user's identity keys and their passphrases. The agent can then use the keys to log into other servers without having the user type in a password or passphrase again. This implements a form of single sign-on (SSO).
P.S: Use a password manager to save your ssh key's passphrase.
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My renewed ThinkPad X250 just got delivered and itâs totally worth it. I hate the fact that I had to pay 18% taxes for this one, but India :shrugs:
Ran a few tests, and mostly everything seems to be working fine except for few dead pixels (not more than 5 pixels) on the screen. Intel AMT was enabled by default and I had to turn it off permanently from the BIOS. I will be wiping my SSD with Windows (10 Pro) and going to make a fresh install of Arch Linux.
For the very first time, I got my hands on the red trackpoint (last ThinkPad I held was when I was 15yo), and being a cli enthusiast I feel that the trackpads were an unnecessary invention :joy:
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Think of a mountain where youâve climbed 2/3rds of it, and you may be struggling at that point. Usually, people tried harder at that point, but most of them never consider climbing it down, try and find a new path to climb up. People are very scared to start over. Thatâs the quality that separates creative people & successful people from normal people.
For the most part, what you think you know isnât actually what you know, but itâs just something youâve got a memorized answer for.
A lot of intelligence these days is just a brain pack of civilization which is documented and is very accessible on the Internet, which you know how to look them up and youâve memorized some of them, but not good enough to teach it to a child or at the university.
âTL;DRâ - Donât give me a lecture, give me a book; donât give me a book, give me a blog post; donât give me a blog post, give me the tweet, donât give me the tweet, I already know.
Rather than reading all the books, itâs better to read a couple of them, over and over again until you absorb them. Therefore reading for personal curiosity is better than reading for completion.
Keeping the mind open for ideas that you never understood before could be a very good goal for reading a book. And when you find something that resonates with you, you can research and reflect on it.
One way to think about todayâs generationsâ attention span is that they canât focus on one thing for a very long time, but another way to look at the same is to, Iâm good at digging a piece of text, I can find something really quickly and get to the bottom of it within a very short amount of time.
In the context of celebrities are the most miserable human beings: How you see yourself (self-image), is what has been built upon a history of compliments, and it doesnât take very long for some idiot (rarely found) to come along and tear it down. Because it doesnât take many insults to cancel out a lot of compliments.
You want to be rich and anonymous not poor and famous.
If youâve something original and interesting to say, you should say it otherwise itâs probably been said better.
Desire is some sort of contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.
Itâs okay to have desires; you are a human being and itâs alright to have goals & mission in life, but donât pick them up unconsciously or randomly. For example, my coffee is too cold, it doesnât taste quite right, Iâm not sitting perfectly, I wish it was a little warmer, I donât like my dog pooping in my lawn, etc.
Picking one overwhelming desire and suffering over that one, but you should be okay to let all the others go so that you are to perform a calm, peaceful, and relaxed at your job.
We live in the age of infinite leverage, meaning your actions can be multiplied a thousandfold either writing a blog post or investing capital or by having people work for you or by writing code, and because of that, the impacts of decision-making are much higher than they used to be.
Coase Theorem (by Ronald Coase) states that, in the face of market inefficiencies resulting from externalities (third-party delegation), private firms are able to negotiate a mutually beneficial, socially desirable solution as long as there are no costs associated with the negotiation process. For example, if a business is subject to a noise complaint initiated by neighboring households, the Coase Theorem leads to two possible settlements. The business may choose to offer financial compensation to the affected parties in order to be allowed to continue producing the noise. Or the business might refrain from producing the noise if the neighbors can be induced to pay the business to do so, in order to compensate the business for additional costs or lost revenue associated with noise abatement.
Delegation of work to a third-party provider vs building it in-house: A lot of it depends on how hard it is to do the transaction with someone externally versus internally if itâs too hard to perform the transaction externally, then Iâll bring it in-house, but if itâs easier to do externally and itâs one-off kinda thing, then Iâd rather keep it external. Information technology is making it easier and easier to make these transactions externally so we are seeing an atomization of the firm. Weâre seeing the optimal size as the firm is shrinking (here the Coase theorem is applicable).
Since the dawn of time, automation has been eliminating jobs, for example when electricity was invented people who used to carry buckets of water lost their jobs, so did when the printing press was released; automation frees up people to more creative work. So, the question isnât if automation is going to eliminate jobs but how soon can we figure better & creative work and how quickly can this transition going to happen. And so, automation can only (and eventually) will replace all the non-creative jobs.
Capitalism is bad only when there isnât an equal opportunity. Whatâs also bad is enforcing equal outcomes, since as a free person you should be allowed to make different choices and reap the rewards from the good ones & face the consequences of the bad ones. And if that is not allowed, then you are just forcibly redistributing through violence.
With my family Iâm a communist, with my close friends I am a socialist, at my state-level politics Iâm a Democrat, at higher levels Iâm a republican, at the federal level Iâm a libertarian - Nassim Taleb
The more the people are the less the trust is, the more the system has to work the more you go towards capitalism.
If you want to see who rules over you, see who youâre not allowed to criticize.
The test of any system is to hand it over to your enemies to run it for the next decade.
All of manâs problems arise because he cannot sit by himself in a room for thirty minutes alone. - Pascal
Meditation is the art of doing nothing. So, what exactly happens is that you think through a lot of issues that were going through your life and make peace with them, one by one. And there will come a day when you are sitting and meditating, and all youâd think about is yesterday because youâve processed everything else in your life.
The best way to change the world is by living the life you want everybody else to live.
Being poor may keep you unhappy but having money wonât make you happy. This usually puts people in the thought process that smart people can never be happy, but itâs not true.
Retirement (should be) when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow.
The way to retire is to find something authentic that you can do better than everybody (and map it to something society wants). And because youâll be a personal brand, nobody will be able to replace you, hence no one can compete with you.
The two great addictions: heroin and a monthly salary - Nassim Taleb
Every man has two lives, and the second one starts when he realizes he has just one. - Confucius
One way to be happy is by working on every negative judgment that you have until you end up seeing a positive side in everything.
Would you be interested in learning something if you couldnât ever tell anybody?
Rest, leisure, spending time with your loved ones, thatâs all great, but if youâre doing anything that you donât want to do (working), itâs better be for an hourly rate.
weechat is a curses-based IRC client and a very sane alternative to irssi. For those with IRC bouncers, or those who spend a great deal of time on IRC, popular channels can start to accrue rather large logs. By default, those logs are quite verbose and are never rotated. In my case, weechatâs logs were taking up 2GB worth of disk space on my VPS.
When you realise that people have been through the same stuff & have solved it :D
~/home/ - apps/ user-space applications - cloud/ folder to synced to private server - archive/ rarely accessed, mostly compressed - lifelog/ synced lifelog from mutiple systems - backups/ system backup files - resources/ media personalization or later use - audio/ streamed using plex server - music/ collection of favorite music - podcasts/ collection of favorite podcasts - docs/ textbooks, manuals, etc. - books/ ebooks - fonts/ downloaded, patched font files - img/ pictures - dp/ display pictures - info/ graphs, charts, information - wallpapers/ currently rotating wallpapers - private/ letters, keys, certificates, etc. - vids/ movies, tutorials etc - edu/ educational content - entt/ mostly related to entertainment - .config/ configuration files (VCS) - dev/ software development - co/ checkout other projects - play/ playground for tools & scripts - sw/ main software projects - go/ golang workspace - jots/ jotting ideas (stays local) - .local/ symlink to ~/.local - bin/ binaries that are added to path - scripts/ shell scripts added to path (VCS) - share/ used by apps to store user data - shared/ shared between VMs or other users - distros/ iso images of linux distributions - unsorted/ random files yet to be sorted - screenshots/ screenshots default folder - downloads/ Firefox and Brave to download here - vm/ virtual machines
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A closer look at Wayland and Xorg, the two most popular display servers in the wild. Join security analyst Shivam Sengar to learn about their differences.
Introduction Despite my woeful knowledge of networking, I run my own DNS servers on my own websites run from home. I achieved this through trial and error and now it requires almost zero maintenancâŚ